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Sunday, February 3, 2013

How Political Elite Influence English Grammar and Vocabulary

By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.

When I wrote about President
Goodluck Jonathan’s grammatical boo-boos last week, part of my motivation
was to contribute to the conversation about how elite grammatical infractions
contribute to the decline or vitality of English usage. While Goodluck Jonathan
is certainly the worst abuser of the English language in the history of Nigerian
presidency, he is by no means the only prominent political or cultural figure
to violate the lexis and structure of the language in the English-speaking
world.

In this week’s column, I chronicle a sample of unorthodox
elite usages that have acquired prestige over time, and wonder if Jonathanisms,
(as I call the idiosyncratic grammatical slips of President Jonathan) might
enjoy some acceptance in the pantheon of English usage in the future.

In an April 29, 2010 article on this issue, I observed thus:
“Now, what is considered correct usage is often no more than elite social
tyranny—and sometimes the product of an improbable concatenation of ‘popular’
pressures and elite consensus. Pierre Bourdieu has written brilliantly on this
in his book titled Language and Symbolic
Power. And because ‘standard’ usage norms often reflect the biases and
arbitrary social conventions of the ruling intellectual, cultural, and
political elites in any given epoch, the norms usually change in the course of
time.”

Well, see below a list of prominent personalities who have
pushed the frontiers of English grammar and vocabulary—and who sometimes
succeeded in changing the rules of usage.

The Queen of England.
Even the Queen of England, the unofficial guardian of the English tongue, is
given to occasional violation of the rules of her own language. In their book Longman Guide to English Usage,
Professors Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut shared how the Queen misused the
expression “due to” and inadvertently caused the rule to be changed in favor of
her misuse.

In traditional grammar "due" is an adjective, and when it
is followed by the preposition "to" it should be attached to a noun
(example: the cancellation of the event was due to the rain). The use of
"due to" at the beginning of a sentence in the sense of "because
of" or "owing to" was considered uneducated. But when the Queen
of England, in a Speech from the Throne, said "Due to inability to market
their grain, prairie farmers have been faced for some time with a serious
shortage," this "uneducated" usage gained respectability. It is
no longer bad grammar.

Queen Elizabeth

I once observed that this example shows the arbitrariness
and unabashed elitism of (English) usage norms.

But that’s only partly true. What is equally true is that research
has shown that the Queen of England has lately been speaking like her subjects,
leading the Daily Mail, UK’s
second-biggest selling newspaper, to write in
a recent story that “The Queen no longer speaks the Queen's English.”

Former US President
Warren Harding. America’s 29th president, Warren Gamaliel
Harding, who was like the George Bush of 1920s America, was famous for
committing a malapropism that later became normalized in American English.
During America’s presidential campaign in 1920, Harding’s slogan was: “A return
to normalcy.”

His first mention of “normalcy” was during a political speech. He
said, “America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but
normalcy; not revolution but restoration.” The word appeared again in his
inaugural address after he won the presidential election. "Our supreme
task is the resumption of our onward, normal way.... We must strive to normalcy
to reach stability,” he said.

Now, the usual noun
associated with “normal” in America—and elsewhere in the English-speaking
world— in the 1920s was “normality,” not “normalcy.” As you would expect,
political opponents and American grammar nazis of the time viciously excoriated
Harding for this malapropism.

Harding

But “normalcy” is now an acceptable word in American
English, although it is still frowned upon in British English. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English
Usage notes that “normalcy” has, in the course of the years, become
“recognized as standard by all major dictionaries,” pointing out that “there is
no need to avoid its use.”

Intriguingly, though, recent research has found that “normalcy”
has existed in the vocabulary of the English language way longer than the
1920s. The Oxford English Dictionary
says “normalcy” first appeared in English in 1857, that is, about 50 years
before Harding used it. But the word had been dormant until Harding revived it—in
“ignorance.”

George W. Bush.
Former president George inflicted a lot of violence on the grammar of the
English language. His often comical grammatical missteps have come to be known
as “Bushisms.” During a January 11, 2000 campaign speech in South Carolina, for
instance, he famously said, "Is our children learning?" He, of
course, meant to say “Are our children learning?” In an October 18, 2000 speech
at a town in the state of Wisconsin he also said, "Families is where our
nation finds hope, where wings take dream" instead of “Families ARE where
our nation finds hope, where DREAMS take WINGS."

But by far his most legendary malapropism was
“misunderestimate.” He wanted to say his opponents underestimated him by
mistake, so he took “mis” from “mistake” and added it to “underestimate” to produce
“misunderstimate.”

Bush

Misunderestimate now appears in a number of dictionaries.
While many linguists still ridicule the word, others think it will endure
because it has filled a lexical void in the English language. Wikitionary, the
collaborative online dictionary, says
“misunderestimate” is a portmanteau of “misunderstand” and “underestimate” and
defines it as “to underestimate severely.”

I won’t be surprised if “misunderestimate” achieves the same
level of acceptance and prestige in American English as “normalcy” has.

Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin is the former Republican vice presidential nominee during the 2008
election. She is also notorious for her atrocious grammar and hilarious malapropisms.
Her most memorable malapropism was her use of the non-existent word
“refudiate.” During the controversy over the building of a mosque near the
World Trade Center in New York, she wrote the following message on Twitter: “Ground
Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours
throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.”

She meant to write “repudiate,” but probably also thought of
“refute” and then got confused, so she blended “repudiate” and “refute” to form
“refudiate.” Of course, critics and grammatical purists pounced on her
immediately. But unlike Harding and Bush, she fought back. “‘Refudiate,’
‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare
liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!” she wrote on Twitter.

(For those who don’t know, “wee-wee’d up” is a phrase
invented by President Obama during a speech in Washington, DC. He used it to
mean “overexcited about trivial issues,” but “wee-wee” is normally a children’s
term for “urinate.”)

Dictionary.com writes: “Say what you will about her
invocation of Shakespeare, but Palin raises a classic debate among linguists
and lexicographers (people who create dictionaries). Dictionaries have always
faced the dilemma whether to be prescriptive or descriptive. Is it the job of a
dictionary to direct how words should be used, spelled, or pronounced, or
should a dictionary simply document the current usage of the language?”

Well, dictionaries grapple with this dilemma only when the
political and cultural elite in (native) English-speaking countries invent or
distort words. That is why, although “refudiate” is a clear malapropism, it won
New Oxford American
Dictionary‘s 2010 Word of the Year! The dictionary defines refudiate thus: “verb
used loosely to mean ‘reject’: she called on them to refudiate the proposal to
build a mosque. [origin — blend of refute and repudiate]”

Would any dictionary consider President Jonathan’s inversion
of the meaning of “filter” as a word of the year?

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.